Saturday, April 5, 2014

And now a few words from Professor Petkovic

All photos by Daniel Ward

"When I was in school and I was in fifth grade and 13-graders....The 13-graders were walking past me. I was in awe. Wow, the big ones, the teenagers smoking, being all cool with their backpacks and their pants down to their knees. I thought they were the coolest in the world, and when they were walking past me, I was like, please don't see me, please don't see me, please don't see me.

"And then when I was in the 13th grade, the fifth graders, they were running around, hitting our backpacks, throwing at us balls and stuff. They didn't respect us at all.

"But that's good, you know. For tennis it's good. For me as a 13-grader, I wanted to be the cool one, but I wasn't. So you know, I feel like in tennis it's the same. The new generation doesn't care about the names anymore. They're just very confident, and they believe in themselves a lot, which is great for tennis, but I was just never that type of person. I needed a lot of experience. And so yeah, but it's good for them, I guess."

1 comment:

I STILL Stand With Maria

About the blog author

Diane Elayne Dees is a writer, a semi-retired psychotherapist in private practice, and a life-long fan of women's professional tennis.

For several years, Diane published the progressive blog, The Dees Diversion, and she also contributed regularly to the Mother Jones MoJo Blog. Diane has published political essays, short fiction and creative nonfiction. For the past several years, she has concentrated on writing poetry (Diane has written several tennis-themed poems).